It took some experimenting and a lot of trial and error to get the look that I wanted. Materials used on the armor are really simple and just have a Diffuse map with a fresnel overlay and some procedural bump mapping (Fig.10).

Fig.10

Lightning and Rendering

I created a simple two-point setup for the final image with all the default settings. I just tweaked the intensity a bit on each one of them. I also added a HDR map in both the environment and reflection slots of the V-Ray renderer. By doing this I was able to catch some reflections on the metal parts of Katsumoto's armor. I think this is really important as it helps to sell the final render (Fig.11).

Fig.11

Post-production

Like most 3D artists out there I used Photoshop for the final compositing. I didn't go crazy with passes on this one and I only rendered out a ZDepth pass so I could add some subtle depth of field.

Most of the work was about color correction, so I spent some time trying to create different moods using curves and exposure controls in Photoshop. I finished it off with a vignette and some hand-painted dust particles that are flying through the air.

And here's the final image (Fig.12).

Fig. 12

Conclusion

I hope you liked this Making Of, and if you have any further questions about the process feel free to drop me a line at hasan.bajramovic@gmail.com

(ID: 183730, pid: 0) Txikimorin on Tue, 26 February 2013 3:51pm Thanks man!
I'm a lover of Japanese culture too, and I was planning on doing a 3d samurai armor for this summer, seeing this just motivates more!